Dundee Contemporary
Arts until January 5th 2014
Four stars
There's something
quietly starstruck about the subject of 'Lenticular' (2013), the
newly-commissioned film-work by Japanese artist Hiraki Sawa, which
forms the centrepiece of Sawa's first solo exhibition in Scotland.
Robert Law is a self-taught astronomer who works at Dundee's Mills
Observatory, where Sawa filmed this cosmonaut of inner space going
about his business of exploring other worlds with somewhat
archaic-looking machineries of joy. The result is an impressionistic
six-minute portrait of one man's parallel universe that's
counterpointed by a domed facsimile of the Observatory, that comes
complete with meditative projections and an ambient score that
suggest the ultimate chill-out room.
It's a telling insight
into Sawa's playful sensibilities, in which after-dark
magical-realist dream-states conjure up imaginary worlds. The word
'lenticular' describes something that is lens-shaped. As Sawa focuses
in on assorted obsessions in both wide-screen and miniature, the
physical space left between each piece is also telling.
In 'Lineament' (2012),
a vinyl record unravels and goes through walls and doors as a man
attempts to recapture the threads of his memory. While this is spread
across two screens, an actual record plays the film's soundtrack. All
of this is synchronised with 'Lenticular' so they play in turn rather
than over each other in a grown-up, sub-Lynchian affair.
If 'Aurora' (2013)
gives its one-minute mirror image of the Northern Lights a wide-eyed
depth and the five-film 'Souvenir' (2012) becomes a vivid set of
sense memories, an even brighter sense of wonder prevails in 'Inhere'
(2004), 'Unseen Park' (2006) and 'Elsewhere' (2003). With the first
two pieces made with children, Sawa has spaceships fly through
washing machines and goldfish bowls in 'Inhere', and a whole fleet of
Origamied-up make-believe vehicles flying high in 'Unseen Park'. In
'Elsewhere', toilet rolls and other domestic objects come to life.
It's as if the culprits behind the Cottingley Fairies hoax had taken
over an after-hours toy-shop and reimagined the world anew.
The List, November 2013
ends
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